Doctor Who_ The Tomb Of Valdemar Part 23

'Light! Light!' Hopkins screeches at the top of his voice. There is a flash, and milliseconds later, the sound of the report Redfearn firing, reacting more quickly than he would have believed possible.

There is the sound of running and scuffling and Hopkins is pushed off balance by some mighty force. He topples and finds that the ground has disappeared. Instead, there is nothing but water; one of the pools is all there is to break his fall. He hits it with a mighty clap and then the liquid is all over him.

He sits up, spitting out the foul, scented water. A light flashes on, right in his eyes, and he sees the pistol, the thumb c.o.c.king it and Mr Redfearn laughing right behind it.

'It's me! It's me!' Hopkins screams and the light flicks off.

He buries his head in the water once more, panic-stricken.

Getting his heart under control, he hauls himself up. His men are shouting and das.h.i.+ng around in the dark. He hears iron and spur clas.h.i.+ng in the inky blackness. 'Get some torches on!' he bellows, coughing out the last of the pool. His armour leaks like a waterfall. Someone, Carlin, finally barks orders that bring the men under control. Torchlights snake through the blackness.

This is it, Hopkins thinks. This is it! It was all going so smoothly and professionally until Pelham and her madman turned up. Since then, the whole operation has been one long catalogue of errors. He is certain Neville can see this and is laughing at him. Laughing!

Well, no more. The Doctor is going to die for this. Die.

'Are you all right, Citizen Hopkins?' asks a concerned Carlin, right by his side, making him jump, making him slip back into the pool once more.

He spits water, as eager hands help him up. 'Get away from me!' he snarls, slapping Carlin. Finally, the torrent of water stops flowing out of his armour. His boots, however, remain full. He jabs a finger where he thinks Carlin's face should be.

'I want the Doctor and I want him dead, you understand me?'

'Citizen.'

'Now get the men organised. No more mistakes. Give me that torch.'

Carlin does so. The men are bunched round him, ready for action. Hopkins s.h.i.+nes the light, one at a time into their faces. Is he checking to see if any of them are laughing? He will not admit that to himself. One man, two, three, four...

wait a minute.

'Something the matter, Citizen?' asks Carlin, as the torch stops moving.

'What's going on?' Hopkins mutters. There are more than eight men here, many more. Who's that behind Carlin? 'You,'

he snaps. 'Show me your face.'

The soldier walks into the small spotlight. Where's his d.a.m.n helmet? It looks more... more like a hood.

Even before the creature reveals its face to Robert Hopkins, as the lights flicker back on, he knows who this must be, and who all the others are that have risen from the floor to encircle his tiny unit.

That man Redfearn was as quick as he had feared. Almost.

The Doctor's hair still burned from the furrow driven through it by the bullet. He would have to get his hat repaired... well, get Romana to do it, if he ever found her again.

'Where are we going?' asks Pelham, out of breath and clearly confused about the events of the last few minutes.

'And how did you do that?'

He tries to shut out her voice. His diversion hasn't gained them that much time. They're back where they were before, and there was the access conduit up to the control room.

Pelham sees it and stops. 'No, Doctor. Not again,' she leans against the corridor wall, her breathing hoa.r.s.e with sobs.

'Yes, yes, yes,' he insists, hauling her off her feet and up on to the creaky metal ladder bolted into the conduit's side. He pushes her, egging her on.

There isn't much time, so he explains on the climb. As much to rea.s.sure himself as anything else. 'I should have realised it much earlier.'

'What's that then, Doctor?' Pelham's weary voice comes booming down the ladder.

'The Old Ones wouldn't have bothered with such a tiresome way of transporting themselves into the particle accelerator as your bathyscape. Of course they wouldn't. They were far too lazy for that.'

'And?'

'And they would have set up some kind of transmat-beam.

And the control room does seem the rather obvious place to operate it, don't you think?'

'Now you mention it, not that obvious...'

'Keep climbing. Time's running out.'

She is out, back where they drank that foul potion. The Doctor practically leaps out of the hole in the floor and bounds to where he knows the beam is, where it has to be.

That console, there!

'The palace operates through mind reciprocity. It attempts to cater for its host's neural wishes. Now, if you don't know it will do this, it will respond to your unconscious, emotional wishes. I worked it out and decided to affect it consciously.

Just in time as it turned out. Now, quiet please, as I try to unlock the transmat's telepathic operational cyphers.'

Pelham puts her hands on her hips. 'And do you know all this, or are you just guessing?'

He shrugs. 'Well, an educated guess perhaps. Now, quiet please.'

He is just about to start when something flutters in front of him. He s.n.a.t.c.hes it out of the air. It is a small rectangular piece of card. One side decorated; the other, the ace of hearts.

There is a click from behind. A sound he finds uncomfortably familiar. The c.o.c.king of two pistols. 'Very clever, suh. Ah congratulate y'all.'

The Doctor forces a huge smile on to his face as he turns to face the gunslinger. 'Mr Redfearn, how nice to see you again.

I'm so sorry you missed me.'

Mr Redfearn raises a discreet eyebrow. 'An unfortunate occurrence ah intend to rectify right now, Doctor.'

'No last words?'

'Not this time.'

Pelham almost makes a move; the Doctor senses it and waves her back. Mr Redfearn is cool, completely unruffled.

His aim is disturbingly unwavering.

'How about a fighting chance, to make it more interesting for you?'

'No tricks, Doctor. I couldn't miss a second time. How would I live it down?'

'Ah, but you see, I think I'm faster than you.' The Doctor stares back and nods.

'Doctor...' hisses Pelham.

At last, Mr Redfearn laughs out loud. Good-natured, a nice man. The Doctor laughs too. 'No,' says the gunman, with a finality.

'I don't mean a gun. I... I'll just use this.' Slowly, very slowly the Doctor unwinds the scarf from around his neck.

'That sc.r.a.p of wool? I am not an idiot, suh, do not treat me as such.'

'Oh, I mean it. I'll wager I'm faster with this scarf than you are with that gun.'

Mr Redfearn snorts, once. He uses one pistol to raise the hat over his face.

'Well, of course, if you're afraid I'll beat you...' says the Doctor.

'I will not be goaded, suh.' However, with the merest flicker of emotion, Mr Redfearn slowly replaces his pistols into their holsters. 'Very well, you have your wager. To even the odds a little, ah will even fire using mah left hand. However, ah must warn you suh, the truth is, ah am just as fast with the left paw as ah am with the right. Draw when ready.'

The Doctor takes the scarf and loops it slowly round itself.

He is not thinking about the stupidity of his action, or that Pelham is putting her hands over her eyes, or even of Mr Redfearn's sly grin. He suspects something, the Doctor realises. He thinks it's a trick.

They stare, each waiting for the other to move. The sly grin never lapses.

'Oh for G.o.d's sake, this is ridiculous,' says Pelham and the Doctor sees Mr Redfearn, with a predator's reactions, whip the pistol from its holster. He makes his move.

Chapter Twelve.

If Romana had been in one of her contemplative moods, it is more than likely she would have diagnosed her psychological condition as that of transference. Transference being the displacement of negative emotional energies generated by a highly stressful external stimulus, or stimuli (let's say, for the sake of argument two zombies pounding at the bedroom door of a highly disturbed adolescent with unprecedented psychic abilities, possessed of an unnatural fixation upon her) from that source to another (let's say, again for the sake of argument: the Doctor, who had dropped her into this mess).

Unfortunately for Romana, she is not in one of her contemplative moods. Undeniably however, the transference is definitely there as she mentally curses the being who got her into this mess. She thinks about the various punishments she has devised for his benefit. Yes, once she gets out of this room...

The banging is increasing and it seems as if the door is getting warmer. She tries an experimental touch. Oh yes, definitely getting warmer. Somehow the butler and his new playmate are burning their way in.

'Huvan,' she addresses the youth lying slack-jawed on the bed, 'if you can think of a way out of here, I really would be incredibly grateful.'

It is as if he can no longer see her. He had lain back on the bed as soon as she returned, as if her presence was enough to send him into a nice relaxed sleep. Romana realises the boy has gone into some kind of trance. She hesitates to conclude that the palace is using him as some kind of battery, a spark to kick off its own power reserves.

A rather unpleasant burning smell starts to drift in from the doorway. The metal seems to be warping in its frame.

Whatever they are doing to it, it's proving very effective.

'Huvan!' she shouts. He does nothing but lie there, eyelids fluttering. She thinks briefly about the damage Neville has done to Huvan's mind, and how emotionally ill-prepared he is for this new role he has been forced to play.

The door cracks and Romana forgets her pity. A clasping black glove, Kampp's, is pus.h.i.+ng its way through the red-hot gap. The leather chars and crisps, but if the butler feels any pain, he certainly keeps it very quiet.

'Come along, Romana,' says Kampp, reasonably in a voice that, well, to be honest, she can only describe as a cold gloat.

There is something unfamiliar about its tonal qualities, as if something without any understanding of how a voice works is attempting to sound human. 'There, there... promising thee much lovely new worlds... all suns.h.i.+ne and music inside...'

The insincerity is so apparent it is almost funny. Almost.

Kampp pushes a burning head through the gap he has created. The black coral has utterly consumed the flesh.

Nothing remains but an obscene insect mask bearing only a token resemblance to what he once was. The mouth chitters and chatters as if too full of energy to remain contained.

Before Romana can act, before she can think of any way out of this, the door collapses and the two... things that were once men stagger in. They peer around, as if trying to focus on her.

'Huvan, according to all the known rules of dramatic structure, the time has come to act. Now!'

Nothing happens.

Perhaps responding to her voice, the tottering pair reach out for her. Huvan does nothing, just lies there. Already Romana feels the tugging at her mind. A tugging she understands now, instigated by Valdemar. Her eyes begin to itch as she backs against the wall.

As the men approach she feels strangely disconnected, as if this were all happening to someone else. 'Please, no,' she tries to say, but cannot. She can feel their singed gloves as they reach her, the distorted hands clutching her face, sees the black mirrors of their eyes. But she is somewhere else, somewhere dark and cold that screams for release.

All that is certain is that we move, together.

We travel down a great, dark, rus.h.i.+ng tunnel, understanding that it is not only s.p.a.ce and time, but also other forms of universal movement and distance. A vista of the indescribable, of the greater.

At first, there is only a great unity, a single one Movement, brighter than anything before or since. The whole, all.

Slowly, sheets of movement become clear; spinning, immense idiosyncratic waves separating, becoming arrhythmic. More subdivision, and again, as the single harmony becomes an infinity of eccentric movements that make up the whole.

We realise (for neither 'perceive' nor 'see' can do justice) that which, although us us, is also beyond us us. Smaller forms, with their own crystal activities that we once thought of as separate life forms travel through their cycles, spanning centuries. A great race, conical and many-limbed, flying through the universe on membranous wings; urged on by the solar winds, scouring planets, learning, until finally the patterns coalesce on to a s.h.i.+ning world, a blue planet soaked in ocean.

The construction, from the raw matter of the Movement.

Beneath the surface, a circle constructed, controlled from the structure above a great hammer with which to smash a way into the whole, to break it open. The race tearing and ripping a wound through the dance. We see them subsumed, their own movements zephyrs of swirling dust disseminated into the greater spinning clouds until nothing is left. The Old Ones.

('Romana') A seal, a patch bolted over the tear, the forces which are the Movement, which are us us, held at bay. The closing, the blue oceans changing hue, altering their patterns for ever.

('Romana') Slowly, as the rhythm is regained, we correct ourselves.

Our damage, over centuries, is repaired. Until, later in the eternal Movement, we will see the actions repeated.

('Romana!') A sound, many sounds, harsh and angry, burst into her consciousness. There is a blinding light and something more.

Romana feels severed from herself.